Learning the Hard Way 2

by H. P. Caledon

  Keelan woke up and smiled when he remembered where he was. And he didn’t have to leave early. He didn’t even intend on doing anything before Alice got up. Maybe he should wake her? He’d heard that morning sex was supposed to be fantastic.

  He gently turned to pull her closer. She stirred and looked around, groggy.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

  She smiled and nuzzled her face against his chest. “What time is it?” she mumbled.

  Keelan looked at his crono. “Little past six.”

  “I don’t want to get up.”

  “You don’t have to. I just generally wake up at this time. Sleep,” he cooed and kissed her forehead.

  “What are your plans for today?”

  “Mike and I begin. What time do you open?”

  “Afternoon.”

  “Can you take a few hours off? I want to invite you out for dinner.”

  Alice propped herself up on her elbows and smiled at him. “I can’t today, but we’ll find a day during the week. Billy, Jerry, and Sean need a little notice.”

  “Do you like cheese platter?”

  “Yeah,” she smiled. “But that’s expensive.”

  “Well, we’ve known each other for many years, date and... and I never invited you out. So I think I’ve gotten off cheap.”

  “Oh.” She slapped him before snuggling in by his side again.

  He pulled her in close and hummed deeply, feeling happy in a way he couldn’t remember.

  “Do you really think you can find her?”

  He stalled, sniffing her hair. “We’re gonna try. But we don’t have a lot to go on.”

  “A girl. What would you have named her?”

  “Ha. I don’t know enough girl names for that.”

  “That sounded good,” she said, grinning. “Or did you just not care about them?”

  “Who?”

  “How many women have you been with?”

  “Argh, you don’t ask things like that,” Keelan said, rubbing his face.

  “Come on,” she said, poking his ribs.

  “Okay, not there, I’m ticklish right there.”

  “Really? Better answer then.” She attacked the ticklish rib.

  “Okay, okay... three.”

  Alice propped herself up on her elbows again and looked at him, astonished. “Three?”

  “Yes, three. Don’t tell me I’m a prize bull in bed.”

  Alice laughed and moved about to straddle him. “Prize bull? Nah.”

  Keelan tried to find a place she was ticklish and found a spot pretty quickly. She laughed and squirmed, which did nothing for Keelan’s self-control, considering her pelvis’ position.

  “There are no women in the prisons I went to, and I’ve spent half my life there. Almost.”

  Alice stilled with her face against his chest. “I like Rosita.”

  “Sounds Spanish.”

  “Yeah, I grew up in one of the Spanish colony towns in the Frontiers.”

  “So... do you want to go back to the fronts?”

  “Nah.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Why?”

  “You, me, and a little farm. Maybe a couple more kids... oh yeah, and Mike. He says he’s good at cooking. Casseroles, at least.”

  “Sounds like you’re proposing to me this time?”

  “Tempting. But I only got my freedom a few months ago. A lot needs to be done before that fence has been removed permanently, sweetheart.”

  “Sweetheart?” She smiled and caressed his arm. Then her smile disappeared. “Where’s your rap sheet?”

  “You must have me confused with someone else... like my dysfunctional and deeply criminal twin brother,” he said, chuckling. “It’s been burned off.”

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Mike, if that’s you I’m gonna tie you to your bed!” Keelan mumbled and sat up.

  Alice laughed and found her robe. “Stay here.” She left the room.

  Keelan smiled and hopped out of bed to eavesdrop. It was Mike.

  “Make us some coffee. We’ll just take a shower, then you can borrow him.”

  Borrow him, ha ha... We are taking a shower? Keelan felt his body react. You’ve been locked up too long, buddy.

  Alice came through the door, and Keelan encircled her in his arms. She relaxed against him. “Feels like you were eavesdropping.”

  “That obvious?”

  Alice looked at him with heavy lidded eyes, snuck her hand down, and squeezed him through the fabric.

  “Busted.”

  Keelan entered the kitchen fully dressed. Mike sat by the table with his feet up on the edge of a chair, drinking a cup of coffee.

  “There’s coffee.”

  “Thanks.” Keelan poured himself a cup. Alice came in wearing her robe. “Are you going back to bed? You have a late shift, right?”

  “I’ll be okay. Are you coming back tonight?”

  “That was the plan, right?” Keelan looked to Mike.

  “Yup.”

  Keelan and Mike walked the streets of Verion four, mostly because they didn’t have anywhere else to start, and the last four hours hadn’t turned up anything useful.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t just go say hi to the Churchburrows and get a name?” Mike asked.

  “Didn’t we promise Lewis that we weren’t going to do that?”

  “Well, I’m not sure.”

  Keelan stopped to face Mike. “Mike, we owe him that much. Besides, not a lot of street kids keep their real name.” Keelan looked around while he changed his eyes once in a while to see if anyone had a color. Mike looked at him and started, grabbed his lapels, and shoved him into a store.

  “What?”

  “People aren’t allowed to see your eyes,” Mike whispered.

  “Then how am I going to see her?”

  “Sunglasses.”

  “Mike, this is Verion four. There’s no sun.” Keelan looked up and saw a color walk by on the other side of the street. “There’s one. Let’s go see if we can figure out how this works.”

  Mike protested, but Keelan finally just grabbed a firm hold of Mike’s vest through the fabric of his clothes, lifted him, and carried him from the store. Mike gave up resisting and straightened his vest and clothes as Keelan let go to look for the man again in reflective surfaces.

  “Where is he? I can’t see him, remember?”

  “Right, two o’clock, red jacket.”

  “Oh, you mean the guy staring right at us?”

  Keelan looked at him, and yes—they made eye contact. “Let’s say hi.” Keelan crossed the road, ignoring Mike’s protests.

  The man didn’t look any friendlier as they drew closer. “What do you want from me?” the guy asked, expertly seeing right through Mike.

  “Talk,” Keelan said.

  “You and I have nothing to talk about, you’re not of me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a bastard child and not of me or mine.”

  Something snapped in Keelan’s brain, and Mike hung on him immediately.

  “Not like that!” Mike sneered and let go, found his ID, and showed it to the man. “We need to talk, turn into the next alley.”

  The man still didn’t seem to notice Mike’s presence.

  “Now!”

  The guy still didn’t move, and his gaze never left Keelan’s. Mike cursed silently. Keelan moved quickly, grabbed the man by the collar, kicked his legs out from under him, and dragged him to the alley. There he hoisted the man up and slammed him against a wall.

  “Much easier to just do what we ask.” Keelan let go of the man, who looked astounded for a second before the hate returned.

  “What color?” Mike asked. Keelan changed his eyes and looked at the man.

  “Difficult to place. Yellow-green with a tint of blue.”

  “And your own?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know? I can’t see it.”

  “The strongest of the colors is the
one you want to focus on,” the man said. “Yours is purple. And therefore, not like mine.”

  “What are you?” Mike asked, but the man didn’t answer. His attention never left Keelan.

  “You better answer him,” Keelan said.

  “Or what? You’ll show your true self?”

  “This is—”

  “He’s an original,” Mike gasped.

  “They’re extinct,” Keelan said.

  “Or hidden. I think your kind is a result of them hiding in human form.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You can kill him.”

  “Thank you.” Keelan pulled a knife. A blink of an eye later, the man had grabbed Keelan’s knife, but Keelan had reacted quickly enough to draw the other one.

  “What the f...” Mike looked from one to the other.

  “Even though you can’t see your own color, you’ll always be able to recognize your own. It’s a feeling. So strong that you won’t doubt it,” the man said, tossed Keelan’s knife to the end of the alley, and left.

  Keelan stayed where he was, thinking about what the man had just said. He thought about the two boys on Red Turf, and how he’d felt a strong loyalty toward the one, but not the other. But he didn’t remember if they had colors. He hadn’t looked.

  “Mike, you know that thing you told me never to talk about again? The part about transporters on Red Turf?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said hesitantly and stepped closer.

  “Well, they got two like me onboard.”

  Mike squeezed his eyes shut and slapped a hand across his face so hard that the smack echoed between the walls. “I don’t want to know any more,” he whimpered. “L—Shit!” Mike sighed and stared up into the sky. “Come on. Let’s check out Red Turf. A girl that age doesn’t have that many places to go.”

  Keelan nodded, fighting nausea, fear, and bloodthirst from the thought of his daughter in the hands of Mr. Rick or the likes while he got his knife.

  “Have you ever been on Red Turf?” Keelan asked. Mike shook his head. “Okay, then listen up. Hide your ID, close your jacket, and walk like a mining driller.” Keelan led by example.

  “Wonder if we’ll find anything now. It’s daytime.”

  “It’s always dusk on Verion four, and on Red Turf the predators never sleep.”

  Keelan chose a route he’d walked a little more than three years earlier, and he remembered that red door and turned instead of ending up on the same corner again and again. Back then the detour had earned him some money, as he’d jumped a pimp and his goon. He’d also passed the same boy three times, and he was the reason for Keelan’s choice of route. Maybe he was still around.

  Keelan turned the corner and sighed when the boy wasn’t there. No such luck. A transporter pulled up, and the boy exited. He was a young man now, by the look of his body, but all Keelan could see was the too-young boy. The young man leaned against the wall where he used to stand, and the transporter drove off.

  Keelan nodded Mike to join him. As they closed in on the boy, Keelan made eye contact with him, but he didn’t seem to recognize Keelan.

  “Wanna come?” Keelan asked.

  “Where to? Don’t wanna do a threesome.”

  “We’re just gonna go for a walk. Like last time. If you remember me?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “One hundred credits. And we just talk.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Soup bar, on us.” Keelan stepped aside so that the boy would walk between him and Mike.

  The boy eyed Mike suspiciously. “You’re a badge.”

  Mike smiled. “No.”

  The boy didn’t look convinced, and Keelan didn’t blame him. Mike’s persona screamed lawman. Keelan’s clothes would, too, if he didn’t know that clothes didn’t really make the man—his experiences did. To move it along, Keelan pulled out a hundred credits and handed the boy fifty of them.

  “You get the rest after.”

  The boy hesitated but finally followed. He kept glancing at Keelan. “Hey, you’re the one who wanted me to escort you to Red Turf a couple of years ago.”

  Keelan nodded and held the door for the kid and Mike. They each ordered a mug of soup and found a table where Keelan found a spot with no one behind him and a clear view of the door.

  “We need your help finding someone,” Mike said.

  “You are a badge!” the boy said and got up.

  “No, we’re not! Right now.” Keelan put a hand up. “We’re looking for a girl around fourteen years old.”

  “Then why pick me up?”

  “It’s a specific girl,” Keelan said, fighting a shiver from running through him.

  “Well, what does she look like?”

  “Good question,” Keelan mumbled and stirred his mug.

  “Have you ever heard about a girl that age suddenly turning chalk white?” Mike asked. A haunted expression crossed the boy’s face, but he shook his head. “You know, even if I’m not a lawman I can still see when people are lying.”

  “I’m not lying! It wasn’t a girl, anyway.”

  “Great,” Keelan growled.

  “Do you know where this boy is, then?” Mike asked.

  “Dead. Mr. Rick killed him. I saw it.”

  “You’ve been one of Mr. Rick’s boys?” Keelan asked, surprised.

  “Who’s Mr. Rick?” Mike asked.

  “Mean, sadistic SOB who has a very disturbed idea of how to protect young people. He promises protection against...” Keelan made a gesture to put Mike up to speed.

  “The Mr. Rick?” Mike exclaimed as if he remembered Keelan telling him how Mr. Rick had forced Keelan to sell himself.

  “Yup.”

  “Mr. Rick’s territory has expanded. His services, too,” the boy said.

  “How?” Keelan asked.

  “Smugglers. Everything runs through him now.”

  “What kind of smugglers?” Mike asked. Both Keelan and the boy looked at Mike. “What?”

  “He’s certainly not from around here, is he,” the boy said and drank from his soup.

  “No,” Keelan said. “I’ll explain it to you later, Mike.”

  “But you know Red Turf. How?” Mike asked the boy.

  “Forget it.”

  “How many smugglers are there, and what routes do they have?” Keelan tried.

  “Four routes, as far as I know. All work from the freight dock bordering Red Turf.”

  “Thanks.” Keelan paid the kid the last of the agreed money. The boy left with his soup.

  “Okay, so I’m the ignorant one here. What don’t I understand?”

  “Smugglers smuggle humans. They smuggle a workforce.”

  “How is there a business smuggling humans when one can board a ferry without needing a pass or being preapproved like in the old days?”

  “Still costs money to board a ferry. And because it’s illegal to use poor people as slaves since the slave act was passed and came into effect. The conditions on Verion four after the last civil war were the main reasons for that clause. I just don’t know how they ever expected it to work in praxis,” Keelan said.

  “By introducing the silver-slave act,” Mike said. “Silver slaves are... were approved by the Senate.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The physician. He’s from Panata.”

  “The slave planet? But, how does the Senate chose children?”

  “They don’t, and they don’t really handpick and approve every individual to be trained. According to the physician, the Senate pays for top notch slaves, and in return, they help hide the trainers’ so-called production. In the beginning, the slave act was made to legally break what was categorized as non-rehabilitation-suited criminals, so they couldn’t break the law anymore. This was back when Kallidan was a Frontier System.”

  “Kallidan? That’s in Husentar, right?”

  “No, Semakus System. It’s the home planet of the Senate,” Mike said.

  Keelan felt ignorant and vowed to r
ead more politics.

  “But the demand for silver slaves grew, and some of the early trainers began collecting among other groups that no one saw as a real part of society or as an unwanted group. They were easier to break, easier to control once in service, and suddenly no one wanted the criminals anymore. They now become mining-slaves.

  “Slave training became a profession, and new means of breaking and marking slaves was introduced. Backdoor dealings with the Senate made it so that the right laws or lack of upholding of others cleared the way of the founding of Panata. The first place you didn’t find segregation laws between humans and species, too, as erikilliens and varanuides are very active on the slave market. They began collecting throwaway children on other planets, bringing them to Panata for training. The Senate gets five percent of every trainer’s profit, five percent of the collectors and ten percent of sales of gold slaves directly from the breeder.”

  “The physician told you all this?”

  “No, not all of it. My neighbors growing up were a pack of varanuides, and one was a trainer. They train other places than on Panata now.”

  “Nice to know. Okay, the human smugglers work from a slightly different mentality. Slaves demand more... care in the long run, plus they’re expensive to buy. A lot of people here on Verion four dream of a better future. Agents sniff out these desperate souls, lure them, and make money on closing deals that get the poor SOBs out of here and into the arms of people needing cheap labor.

  “Let’s say someone wants to step it up a notch from Verion four, they go to Motáll. Not much better than Verion four, but hey, it has a sun and doesn’t smell like rotten eggs. On Motáll, that SOB works off the travel expenses, room and board, you name it. No expenses for purchasing slaves and fresh hands when the others worked themselves to the bones. If they were bought slaves, they’d be an investment in need of being taken care of. Not these.”

  Mike fumbled with his spoon, looking miserable. “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s a closed loop. And it’s just Verion four.”

  “Not fair, though.”

  “Where do they collect to Panata from? Most often, at least?” Keelan asked, thinking the answer might hold what was needed to put everything into perspective for Mike.

  “The poor planets. Still not fair.”